tampered | (no subject)

[Tsurugi killed here (http://sword-boy.livejournal.com/10212.html) I believe the Keeper starts, right?]

[Justin's last memories were of zombies--or skeletons or mummies or animated corpses or whatever the creatures were. He had evaded them for some time, but once they had found him, there was little for him to do but flail wildly and hope that he would at least irritate a few of the ghouls before dying. The injuries from that pathetically one-sided and lethal battle had healed, however, although the City's regenerative powers had neglected to restore Justin's clothes to their original state.

Waking up in a subterranean chamber didn't surprise Justin nearly as much as it should have. It was a kinder awakening than the one the City had treated him to the other time he had died.

Somewhat disoriented and more than a little afraid that a nightmarish mob of ghouls would appear at any second to rip him apart again, he sat up and surveyed the chamber.]

[ooc: nope, you can, so feel free to go ahead /o/ ]

He hadn't woken for this.

He hadn't stirred awake and alive for their like in many moons, and he made no plans for a habit. Humans could wait on him. His regular visitors could wait on anything, really, without complaint: the mutilated half-corpses strung against his tables, chopped limbs littered on the floor, strips of human skin cleaned and dyed and drying to cover patches on his blood. Little by way of blood. The Keeper - too tall to be a ghost, too thin and pruned and wrinkled to be one of them - the Keeper never liked blood. He'd drowned once, and the signs still showed, and there'd been no blood. No need for it in his trade.

...no need for humans, either. He shot the waking boy a sharp look, inching by so bony fingers could reach to hover over Justin's ankle.

"Needs more gutting, if they're moving by the time them's here. Needs more throttling, like," the Keeper's strong, white teeth show in a plastic smile, "like chicken. You need your neck wrung again? Eh?"

[Tsurugi wakes up to find himself in a place he has never seen before, but reminds him of that accursed necropolis he had been wandering in for what seemed to be the longest time]

...Where... No. Why am I here? I thought I was killed.

[Tsurugi turns to look at his surrounding, but sees nothing. Nothing at all.]

Huh... It appears I stand on top of being dead alone.

He'd run the room dark to spare his tools exposure, but the Keeper knows enough about the human way, and it's always light with them. Their membranes can't handle anything else, their eyes are poor, their senses. He appears suddenly enough in a corner with a very pale candle, the flicker of it showing the man himself - tall, drained, the skin too rough - and on the wall behind him, thick layers of skin.

"Ain't alone, boy, though them rules be saying there should only be one, and you don't mind me, now, but I'm thinking... you're not it."

[Tsurugi turns sharply to face the Keeper, within seconds of it appearing... a benefit of not being perfectly human anymore. The sight of the Keeper doesn't surprise Tsurugi at all, since the Worm were stranger when he thought he was human.]

Who... What are you? ...Wait, thinking? I'm not what?

He drops the candle on an iron bolt, one of the many a telling eye might find piercing from the floor. And he moves forward, chuckling, "Two men be meeting at a crossroad, then there's hawks and ravens and maggots. You tell me why, boy."

I wouldn't know... you sound like you're Death, or Death's avatar though. My world has technology and aliens in it... not, this. I'm not familiar with this at all.

"Death?" He laughs, coming closer and closer, "You want death, boy? Them's ways to ask, bit nicer too, but this works. Don't be saying I don't take what you're giving, and you a nice lad here."

The Keeper pauses in his step, turning sharply to stare when a insignificant bit of wax splotches from his candle. Tiny sound, really. Doesn't take more. "Don't make them how they used to. Don't make you lot how they used to."

"Death" as in its personification. I still don't have a clue what I'm doing here... with you.

I'm not sure about your candles, but I'm not human.... I haven't been for awhile. That's why I'm not the same as the lot you remember.

"Can be answering that first question, can do that for you."

But he doesn't, not really, not for a short while. The candle's light catches his eye, and he remembers hunger. The point, of course. His head snaps back to his prey of the hour, "You're here to die."

[Tsurugi laughs for a second]

I'm already dead. I died twice before I ever came to the City. So, I don't see how I'm here to die, when death has already taken me.

He shrugs. "And something gone put you back on them legs, and now something won't. That simple, boy, and that easy."

The voice was unexpected. The thing--person?--it had come from looked little better than the other creatures. Justin drew back. The ability to string sentences together (and what unpleasant sentences they were!) didn't mean that this new horror was any less a monster.

"No--no thank you," he replied hoarsely. "Once was enough."

[Tsurugi stops entirely for a few seconds, before getting a tight expression on his face.]

Are you saying that you're what lets the dead "live" here in the City?

The Keeper chuckled, choked on his laughter, then shook his head, "No, boy, no. Seems to me it wasn't. Seems to me you came to die, and there be dying left for you. Pity."

His hand withdrew from the leg, dancing against the wall behind him now. "Ain't was your time, but them's how you wanted it."

Is he dead? Dumb? Brave? Is this what passes in the human world for valor? The Keeper knew once, and now he barely cared. "I'm saying you'll die."

I'm already dead. I accepted that a long time ago... I promised my sister... the one which was killed by this body... that I would eliminate all the Worm, and that meant my own death.

...So, why does it matter if I'll die? I've already died... and died well.

"I didn't come to die," Justin said, the slightest bit indignant. He had tried very hard not to die, in fact. "Not intentionally."

He watched the thing's movements, trying to place it--categorize it, label it, anything. Maybe it was one of the deities. It's lack of clarity certainly made him think of the other powers in the City. "Who are you?"

The Keeper could tell him, of course, give him good answers. The philosophy of the new age, the occultism of the old, the science of what was ultimately his art. Or he could just slit that pretty neck the boy hardly seemed to know how to use well, and be done with it.

Choices, choices. He slipped his hands in his pockets - dark robes over a well worn suit, nothing fancy here - rocking slightly back and forth. Thinking, "Mind, boy, it ain't be much mattering who I am and who you is, and what's going on. We're on a schedule. You'll have to die now, beg pardon. Any favourite ways to get it done with? Got me... got me some good knives. You a noose fellow?"

If it hardly mattered to the intruder, it mattered less to the sack of bones in which the Keeper had fashioned himself. The boy wanted to perish. So be it.

"Let's we be getting it done with, then." He covered a yawn. "You want it with a knife? Some gutting? I'm good with a knife. Ain't seen no complaints. Ain't heard'em, either."

Justin could do little but stare at the man (if it was a man). It seemed unfair, being informed that he needed to die so soon after getting that over with again. He surveyed the cavern, trying to decide whether or not he could escape. But what good would escaping do? They were still clearly underground, and that meant that the rotting creatures were undoubtedly waiting in any chambers beyond this one.

Justin decided to take his chance with the corpse-like entity before him.

"Why do I have to die?" he asked, skipping over the man's inquiry as to his preferred method of execution. "We could--do you... do you make deals?"

And what were men, really? Rags and bones and something blood born, every now and then. Waste of prime matter, if you asked the Keeper, though thankfully, few did.

"Deals, eh? Taking me for one of them bankers?" He pointed his thin hand up, waving enthusiastically towards the ceiling, "They don't be knowing much, bit of bartering... you think I'm them? You think? What do you give them, eh? The - " He spat on the ground, "The smugglers."

And Justin would not break that tradition by asking.

"The deities?" Of course the deities. The bankers, loaners, collectors, and jailers of the City. Justin wasn't sure if he was relieved or alarmed by this affirmation of his suspicions--that this was one of the other powers. "No, I don't--I don't think you're one of them. Sorry." He inched backwards until the cavern wall was flush against his back. It wouldn't save him if this entity wanted to kill him, of course, but it made him feel slightly safer. "I give them as little as possible."

(no subject)

Kamishiro Tsurugi

[backdated to Thursday-ish?]

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